Master of Professional Studies in Leadership for Sustainability

Program Overview

The Rubenstein School offers a Master of Professional Studies in Leadership for Sustainability (MLS) designed for emerging and experienced leaders who wish to deepen their capacity to catalyze change and transcend boundaries.

This two-year, distance-learning program offers an innovative blend of week-long remote learning intensive experiences and engaging online classroom sessions with professional affiliates and peers. The core curriculum and innovative pedagogy are grounded in the belief that the changes we create in the world are reflective of the changes and conditions we cultivate in ourselves. 

Students working in a wide variety of professional fields and communities explore leadership practices that are inspired by the wisdom of nature and challenge forces of domination and oppression. In year two, students conduct a capstone project for which they apply their learnings in their home community.

Our Master of Professional Studies combines the theoretical background of a traditional research degree (Master of Arts or Master of Science) with an applied, professionally-oriented curriculum.

Curriculum

Core Coursework

NR 6110: Leadership for Sustainability Learning Intensive and Course (3 credits) Fall Semester:  August 19-23, 2024
This course begins with a week-long remote learning intensive with a focus on building relationships and a variety of foundational leadership practices.  Essential questions include:

• How can we participate in creating conditions for the full scale of life to thrive?
• How can our leadership practices and structures authentically reflect the wisdom of nature?
• How can we unlearn dominant/colonial patterns of leadership that are perpetuated in many well-meaning change-making initiatives?

NR 6120: Being and Building Beloved Community Learning Intensive and Course (3 credits) Winter/Spring Semester:  January 6-10, 2025
This course begins with a remote week-long learning intensive and ongoing semester-long coursework in the spring semester.  Essential questions include:

• What practices support being and building beloved community?
• What practices and frameworks might support us in our efforts to intervene in and transform systems and structures of domination and oppression?
• How can we build our capacity to work with power, privilege, difference, multiplicity, tension, and incommensurability?

NR 6890: Ecological Leadership Practicum Learning Intensive and Course (3 credits):  June 2-6, 2025
This course involves a week-long remote learning intensive, and ongoing semester-long coursework to support the development of the Master's Capstone project.  This experience will explore the operationalization and embodiment of leadership practices in our lives, organizations and institutions. Essential questions include:

• How can we more fully express and embody our core leadership principles and practices in our relationships, communities, organizations, institutions, and all aspects of our work/lives?  How might this shift our approach to catalyzing change? What are the challenges associated with doing this?
• How can we practice rigor, discernment, and accountability more fully in our lives/work?

NR 6880: Ecological Leadership Seminar Interactive Online Course (6 credits over 2 semesters): Year 1, Fall and Spring Semester
In this online course we engage with 7 different learning modules. Every two weeks, we will explore a new set of themes, practices, and frameworks that build on each other and invite us to think about and practice leadership differently.  Each of these modules are designed and stewarded by MLS professional affiliates and topics may include sovereignty, relational leadership, solidarity, wisdom of nature, cosmologies and ways of knowing, creating conditions, decolonization, creativity, awareness practice, systems thinking/change, and more.

Synchronous course meetings occur on bi-weekly Tuesdays, from 7:00-8:30pm ET. 

Capstone Coursework 

NR 6392: Master's Project (6 credits over 3 semesters): Year 2 Fall, Spring, Summer Semester
The Capstone Project is an opportunity for second-year students to design a project that rigorously integrates key learnings and leadership practices while strengthening relationships, building systems of accountability, and engaging complexity in ways that are deeply aligned with the student’s core values and principles.  The project is an opportunity to address pressing challenges/opportunities in their own home community/organization and is supported through a combination of online modules, coaching, feedback and assessment.  Students are required to develop a project proposal; implement project activities; complete a culminating final report; and present their Capstone project at the annual Leadership for Sustainability Summit.

Elective Courses and Areas of Specialization

Students take 9-credits of elective courses throughout their second year of the program. These courses can support the development of a unique area of specialization or allow students to explore multiple topics.  Students can select courses from MLS program offerings, engage in independent study, or choose other UVM courses (learn more here).  Students can also transfer up to 9 graduate-level courses from other accredited universities (these cannot have counted for other degree/certificate programs).

Elective course offerings change from year to year, but examples of are included below:

• Storytelling and Communicating for Change 
• Ways of Knowing
• Creativity, Leadership and Poetry
• Education, Equity and Learning
• Ecological Economics Theory
• Agroecology
• Independent Study

Deadlines

No longer accepting applications for Fall 2024.

Application Timeline:
Accepting applications on a rolling basis in late summer
Rolling consideration for internal scholarships
Late-February: first-round acceptance decisions made, rolling admissions thereafter based on availability
Late-February - July: ongoing rolling admissions
Program begins with a 3 credit week-long intensive in late August

Admissions Requirements

Applications Require

• Graduate College Application
• Statement of Purpose
• Three letters of recommendation
• College transcripts or description of approved professional certificate 
• Resume
• TOEFL scores for those whose native language is not English, and who have not earned a degree from a U.S. institution or an institution in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, or an English speaking institution in Canada, Ghana, Kenya or Nigeria.

Statement of Purpose Prompts

In your statement of purpose (~1,000 words), please address the following prompts:

• ​What attracts you to the MLS program and how might the program support you to catalyze the change you wish to create in yourself and in the world? 
• What do you lead? Reflect on where you currently are in your leadership journey, and the learning and leadership edges/questions/challenges you wish to explore through the program. 
• Elaborate or reflect on what motivates you as a leader and/or is inspiring you toward a deeper life calling.

Letters of Recommendation

We recommend that you choose letters of recommendation that can speak to these three criteria:

• Your leadership experience 
• Your willingness to engage with ambiguity, complexity and tension in a learning community
• Your capacity and willingness to receive feedback and take an open stance toward learning

Outcomes

Program Aspiration

To participate in creating conditions for all life to thrive over the long-haul.

Programmatic Essential Questions

• How can our leadership practices and structures authentically reflect the wisdom of nature? 
• How can we unlearn and transform dominant/colonial patterns of leadership that are perpetuated in many well-meaning change-making initiatives?  
• How can we deepen leadership practices that draw on multiple ways of knowing, help us stay centered, advance the work of our communities, organizations, and social movements, and participate in creating conditions for life to thrive over the long haul?
• How can we do this in a way that holds love, relationship and well-being at the center?

Values and Principles

We practice creating conditions to support a complex learning ecosystem rooted in the values of relationship, well-being, learning, and love.  We focus on fostering and aligning with ecological principles that support this learning community to: 

1. Develop meaningful relationships (interdependence), 
2. Express our differences (differentiation), and 
3. Participate in generating new possibilities through ongoing learning, change, and creativity (self-organization) 

Three Central Learning Goals: 

• Leadership inspired by the wisdom of nature:  Deepening our relationships with our more-than-human kin and the ecological systems, patterns, processes, and organizing principles that can inspire our leadership and change-making processes;
• Transforming structures of domination and oppression: Enhancing our ability to critically examine and transform dominant mindsets/worldviews and shift inequitable systems, patterns and structures of power and privilege;
• Practice: Deepening leadership practices (see below) that enhance our capacity to draw on multiple ways of knowing, stay centered, catalyze change, advance the work of our communities, organizations, and social movements and participate in creating conditions for life to thrive over the long haul.

Core Practices  

• Sovereign Logic, Sovereignty, & Self-Determination
• Awareness
• Inquiry
• Working with Difference, Multiplicity, Tension, Ambiguity, & Incommensurability
• Relationship Building & Reciprocity
• Systems/Relational/Ecological Thinking
• Solidarity
• Creativity & Play
• Integrity & Accountability

Costs and Scholarships

The MLS program holds financial accessibility as a top priority and is committed to supporting students to attend regardless of financial need. 90% of students receive significant financial support. 

Tuition & Fees Details

From the Student Financial Services Graduate college tuition website:

• Out-of-State Resident Rate: $1,375 per credit
• Vermont Resident Rate: standard Vermont resident rate

For a detailed description of tuition and fees visit Student Financial Services for a detailed account of tuition and comprehensive fees associated with the Master's in Leadership for Sustainability at UVM (note that 30 credits are required to graduate). You can also reach out to Drusilla Roessle for a summary. 

Financial Support

Graduate students in the MLS program have secured funding to offset tuition costs in a variety of ways. Generally, funding has come in the form of these six categories:

Scholarship Opportunities

The Rubenstein School makes every effort to work with students to make their graduate education financially affordable. All admissions decisions are made without regard to financial need or ability to pay. Merit-based and need-based financial support are available through a variety of sources, as well as a multicultural scholarship supporting diversity and inclusion. Financial support in the form of professional development and/or tuition remission funds may also be available through your employer and/or organizational partner.  If you are interested in applying for scholarships, please fill out the Scholarship Application form, or reach out to Margaret Williams.

External Scholarship Opportunities

Our students have also received many external scholarship/fellowships including the Ashoka Fellowship, Robert Fullwood Johnson Foundation Fellowship, Switzer Fellowship, and more. View a compiled list of relevant external scholarships/fellowships. Prospective students may also seek out external funding information and additional resources provided by the UVM Graduate College.

Direct Project Funding & Grants

Some MLS students have applied for grants, private gifts, and even crowd-sourced support to support their Master's Capstone Project (which also benefits their organization/community). Some of this funding has supported travel and direct costs of project work, while other funding has supported students’ time and even tuition costs. In some cases, students have used their project to do significant fundraising for their own home community/organization.

Organizational Support

Many MLS students receive financial support from their home organization that can include tuition remission and other direct costs. Many organizations recognize that this 2-year program will directly benefit the organization. Some students have also designed projects that have led to partnerships with organizations who are willing to fund students for the completion of their Master's Capstone Project.

Financial Aid

UVM’s Student Financial Services Center provides support to graduate students to explore traditional financial aid opportunities (in the form of loans, work study, etc.)

Work Support/Income

Unlike residential programs that are intended for full-time students who must give up their professional employment, the MLS Program is designed for students who work full-time.  This model allows us to offer a reduced tuition rate.  Some MLS students are able to contribute to their tuition costs through income or professional development funds from their professional employment.

Financial Support Quick Links

• Funding Graduate School at UVM
• External scholarship and grant opportunities
• Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) – form and instructions

More

Visit the Master's in Leadership for Sustainability website for more information and a list of faculty and affiliates.